As part of a U.N. program to relocate Syrian refugees in Western countries, Germany has received on Thursday 106 Syrians who left Lebanon through Rafik Hariri International Airport heading to Berlin, escaping more than two years of bloodshed in their war-torn country.

“106 Syrian refugees most of whom are women and children, flew to Germany where they were accepted for temporary resettlement,”said Roberta Russa of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives and the ecologist Greens Thursday agreed to continue talks next week to sound out a potential government coalition, delegates said.

The first exploratory meeting came almost three weeks after Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU) and their Bavarian allies the CSU won September 22 elections but fell short of a ruling majority.

Germany said Thursday there were signs Ukraine was making serious efforts to resolve the issue of jailed former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko, whose continued incarceration risks impeding the signing of a key agreement with the EU.

German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said after talks with Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych in Kiev that an offer to treat Tymoshenko for medical problems in Germany remained on the table.

Germany's foreign ministry confirmed Monday that a security official at its embassy in Yemen has been killed but denied reports of an attempted kidnapping of its ambassador.

Earlier reports had said the envoy herself had been the target of a failed abduction attempt Sunday, but the foreign ministry then told Agence France Presse that Ambassador Carola Mueller-Holtkemper was outside the country at the time.

Germany on Sunday handed over command of its northern Kunduz camp to Afghan security forces, a milestone in the drawdown from a more than decade-long military deployment.

About 100,000 German troops have served in Afghanistan since 2002, and 54 have died there -- 35 of them in combat -- in Germany's deadliest post-World War II deployment.

Gunmen shot dead the German ambassador's bodyguard in Sanaa on Sunday, sources said.

Gunmen in a vehicle opened fire at the bodyguard as he was leaving a store in the southern Hada district, where foreign embassies are located, a security official and witnesses said.

Twelve days after German elections, Chancellor Angela Merkel started exploratory talks Friday with her defeated center-left rivals on whether they can jointly govern Europe's biggest economy.

Although Merkel triumphed at the polls, she fell just five seats short of a majority, kicking off a process of coalition haggling and political poker that, the election losers have warned, could drag on into next year.

The German government on Monday admitted it had approved as recently as 2011 the export to Syria of chemicals that could be weaponized, and in larger quantities than previously known.

Data released by the economy ministry showed that German firms had exported between 1998 and 2011 to Syria a total of 360 tonnes of chemicals for either military or civilian use.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives will start talks with their defeated center-left election rivals Friday, the first step on a long and thorny road that could end in a 'grand coalition' government.

Merkel, despite her September 22 election triumph, needs to team up with either the Social Democrats (SPD) or Greens party to ensure a majority after her previous allies, the Free Democrats, failed to win any seats.

Germany is ready to give finance and technical support to the international operation to destroy Syria's chemical weapons, Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said Saturday.

Speaking at the U.N. General Assembly, however, he demanded that chemical attacks in Syria be investigated by the International Criminal Court.